The Carver High Rams won a football game. The lowly Carver Rams, outscored 452-8 on the field this year, knocked off the powerhouse Hoover Bucs.

Go Carver, go Carver, go, go, go Carver!

The Rams improve to 1-7 for the season. The hapless Rams, who were promised a football stadium but still limp to Lawson Field for home games because of lies, greed and waste, scored the only way they could.

By forfeit.

That's all right! That's OK! They beat Hoover anyway!

Go Carver. A win is a win, especially when cheating is more common in high schools than even the Southeastern Conference. So what if Carver players lost 59-0 to Hoover on the field? Toss it out. The Alabama High School Athletic Association threw a flag.

Hoover forfeited four games, including the one against Carver, for playing an ineligible player. It's too bad the Rams didn't play Huffman as well. Huffman played an ineligible player and forfeited four games, too, including a 33-0 thumping of Woodlawn.

More Birmingham city schools should have played Hoover or Huffman. A win is a win in Birmingham. It has to be.

Carver was 0-8 before the forfeit and Woodlawn was 1-8. All Birmingham's high schools together started out the season 0-14 against non-city schools. Neither Hayes nor Carver scored a point until opponents had racked up 263.

It's sad. Ignoring sports programs in Birmingham schools is as scary as obsessing on football in Hoover. Maybe it's worse.

Games are often moved or rescheduled, so it's no wonder home crowds in Birmingham are just plain sad. A parent who asks off work to attend a game is rolling the dice.

And while the school board in the off season gave lip service to improving play, it goofed it up worse than a Carver High prevent defense.

All the city's football coaches had to reapply for their jobs when they should have been preparing for the season. Only four high school coaches kept their positions.

You saw the scores. You saw how that worked out.

It is not just an on-field issue. It's another slight to students who have learned to expect nothing more.

And there are consequences. Ask someone who knows.

If there is a "Stand and Deliver" guy in the Birmingham area, it is Jefferson County Schools principal Van Phillips, the guy who grudgingly left Minor High in 2005 for the challenge of cleaning up the mess at Erwin High.

He has pretty much done it. With this formula:

"You have to provide a clean and safe environment," he said. "If kids see cleanliness, they act differently."

And they need discipline. And a thriving athletic department helps build confidence, community pride and school spirit.

"When you don't have all that, it makes it difficult," he said.

You can see it in the stands of a 6A Birmingham football game, where only 40 or 50 people show up. It is sad. Because too few people bothered to care.